Rate My Professor Lidia Morawska

Distinguished Professor Lidia Morawska is a physicist and Australian Laureate Fellow in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Queensland University of Technology. She holds a PhD and MSc from Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. After completing her doctorate in 1982 on radon and its progeny, she worked as a research fellow at the Institute of Physics and Nuclear Techniques in Poland until 1987, followed by postdoctoral research at McMaster University and the University of Toronto in Canada. She joined QUT in 1991 as Senior Lecturer and was promoted to Professor in 2003. In 1992 she established the Environmental Aerosol Laboratory at QUT, which was renamed the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health in 2002 and serves as a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre on Air Quality and Health.

Professor Morawska directs the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health and the ARC Training Centre for Advanced Building Systems Against Airborne Infection Transmission (THRIVE) at QUT. She also holds positions as Vice-Chancellor Fellow at the Global Centre for Clean Air Research at the University of Surrey and Adjunct Professor at Jinan University in China. Her research focuses on air quality and its impacts on human health and the environment, particularly the science of airborne particulate matter, ultrafine particles, indoor air quality, and airborne infection transmission. She has authored more than 1,240 journal papers, book chapters, and conference papers and has advised the World Health Organization on air quality guidelines since 1998, including co-chairing the Guideline Development Group from 2006 to 2021. Her contributions include leadership in recognizing airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, the Royal Society of Biology, the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, and an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Major awards include the 2025 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science, the 2023 L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science International Award, the 2023 Matthew Flinders Medal, the 2021 TIME100 recognition, the 2018 Eureka Prize for Infectious Diseases Research, and the 2017 David Sinclair Award.